Montage (September 20) – DTC 208 Introduction to Digital Cinema

To Do This Week

Watch: Below is an experimental film from 1971 by Polish filmmaker Ryszard Waśko. It uses off-screen sound rather than image to tell its “story.”

Blog: After watching “Okno/Window”, make your own version of a window with off-screen sound. Take about a 30-second shot of a window looking outside. Then start recording audio segments. You can record video, then in Premiere un-sync audio and delete the video track). Or you can go to freesound.org to find audio files to download (mp3 or wav). Or sample audio from other videos. Then build an audio track for your off-screen “window story.”

the video should be no more than 30 seconds.
you may use only “diegetic” music – that is only as sound coming from the world off-screen.

Notes

Window and continuity projects…

Sound design and cinema space.

Adobe Premiere :

export settings
importing sound files – mp3, WAV
unlink/link sound and image
using Work Area Bar to select and export only what you are working on.

Discontinuity and Montage

Montage as Organizing Principle

sound montage

MONTAGE examples

Continuity + Discontinuity

Forever episode….

Discontinuity + Linkage
Metric, Rhythmic, Tonal

Jumps Cuts – Discontinuity + Linkage
The most common form of Hollywood montage editing the “temporal ellipsis.” Cutting out bits of larger continuous time.- Most action sequences. Jump cuts.

Discontinuity + Collision
Art films that associate/contrast disparate spatio-temporal shots.

Dream sequences. Persona, Ingmar Bergman (1966)

“City Symphony” Montage
Discontinuity/Linkage

Dream Logic/Surrealism
Discontinuity/Collision

An Andalusian Dog, by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí – 1929 (tonal, rhythmic, false continuity)
Discontinuity/Collision (and Linkage)

Nonlinear, Chaos, Hyper- and Post-Continuity Editing
Continuity/Collision

Spatial Montage
Continuity/Linkage

How to make Picture in Picture montage with Adobe – Spatial Montage (multiple screens):

In-class Pod Montage Exercise:

Types of Montage:

Metric – editing follows a specific number of frames, duration of shot
Tonal – editing follows visual correspondences/associations for emotional effect, graphic match
Overtonal – combines metric, rhythmic and tonal (a chase scene, any intense action/motion)
Intellectual – editing to create abstract, non-representational ideas

Create a 20-second metric and/or tonal montage (with sound).

For example: a montage of what students do with their hands during a class: type, write, doodle, tap, scroll, etc. You can add a background sound of a class lecture

ASSIGNMENT: Due Friday October 4th

Montage Sequence (5%)

As an element of film language, montage (the juxtaposition of discontinuous fragments) can be a powerful tool for storytelling: getting across ideas or emotions, summarizing events, conveying the cyclical or simultaneous, making poetic associations and creating rhythm and tension. Because juxtaposed images act on our subconscious, montage is effective in propaganda and marketing as well as storytelling. In other words, be free to juxtapose images for narrative/expressive effect, but be aware and sensitive to how those juxtapositions will be perceived. In this assignment, pay attention to Eisenstein’s methods of montage: metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, intellectual.

Create a 30-60 second video (on any subject) that uses at least one of Eisenstein’s montage editing methods (any of these can be combined with the Rhythmic method which is similar to continuity editing). You may also use the Picture in Picture technique for Spatial Montage:

Metric – editing follows a specific number of frames, duration of shot
Tonal – editing follows visual correspondences/associations for emotional effect, graphic match
Overtonal – combines metric, rhythmic and tonal (a chase scene, any intense action/motion)
Intellectual – editing to create abstract, non-representational ideas